The NUJ in the newsBlogger Jon Slattery is excited about a film being shown on BBC4 tomorrow about Rose Hacker, who was billed as the ‘oldest columnist in the world’ in her weekly slot in Jon’s local paper.
Rose, who Jon describes as “a remarkable woman”, was a committed socialist and anti-war campaigner who wrote for the Camden New Journal and Islington Tribune until she died last year aged 101.
Two events are being held next week to show solidarity with our colleagues in Gambia.
On Monday 20 July journalists in Glasgow will hold a vigil in support of the seven journalists facing trial for sedition.
Apparently London mayor Boris Johnson thinks getting £250,000 a year for being a part-time journalist isn’t an obscenely massive salary and he defends it by saying he makes a “substantial donation” to charity.
If he’s looking for worthy causes to assuage his conscience, as a fellow journalist he could do worse than sling a few of his hard-earned quids this way. Or this way if members go out on strike. Or, similarly, this way etc.
Three big stories that in recent months have dominated the news, and will continue to do so for some time to come, bolster the union’s case that there is no substitute for well-resourced quality journalism.
When in April Ian Tomlinson died after being hit by a police officer during the G20 protests, it was professional journalism that turned a citizen’s shaky video footage into an investigation that is still turning up stories.
The ruling today that Suzanne Breen will not have to hand over her notes to the Police Service of Northern Ireland has rightly been hailed by the NUJ as a “landmark victory for journalism and civil liberties”.
At Belfast recorders court, Judge Thomas Burgess refused an application by the PSNI, which would have forced Suzanne, northern editor of the Sunday Tribune in Dublin, to hand over notes, computer equipment and other material relating to the Real IRA.
Guardian blogger and now Kemp Town community reporter for the Brighton Argus, Roy Greenslade, has talked about journalism as a public service before – but he never quite says what he thinks it means.
In a comment on one of his recent posts about hyperlocalism, Roy suggests a familiar slogan: public services not private profit. Which I applaud.
This is the premise for a play coming to London in April that the NUJ and Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom are organising a trip to see.
Maggie’s End looks back to the great miners’ strike 25 years ago – and ahead to the death of Margaret Thatcher.
She died how she lived for the last seven years – in the full glare of the media spotlight, or to use its cosy pseudonym, ‘the public eye’.
Cosy because this suggests the lustful operations of the mass circulation media in illuminating the private lives of public figures are always on behalf of the public.